Parents flee Access Ministries religion classes

The government’s school chaplaincy program has already faced two High Court challenges and may soon face a third. Victoria’s special religious instruction classes are just as controversial, with hundreds of parents withdrawing their children in recent months. Hagar Cohen reports.

It’s term three in Victorian primary schools and for the first time, 50 schools will not hold religious instruction classes.

Lara Wood is coordinating a parent-led campaign against religious instruction by Access Ministries, an organisation that provides Christian education in Victorian public schools.

No, we do not proselytise; it is not something we promote.

Dawn Penney, CEO Access Ministries

‘At our last count 50 schools have chosen to cease the program due to lack of interest,’ she says. 'It’s very significant. We feel that our campaign has been very successful. We feel that we are making history here.'

In 2011, religious instructors were present in 70 per cent of public primary schools in Victoria. Today, they’re in less than half.

Scott Hedges, a father of two who is also part of the campaign, believes it’s only a matter of time before the classes are axed altogether.

His daughters, who went to a primary school in Melbourne, found the religion classes confusing.

‘I felt, very, like, pressurised by doing it because it’s like, forced, like they force you to believe this sort of stuff,’ says one.

George Aslanis, a former Access Ministries teacher, now believes the classes are inappropriate.

‘I didn’t see it different to a Sunday school encounter—similar sort of format, a bit of play, some songs some fun activity, some drawing in, some Q and A, and ultimately, where possible, just putting a seed there, just hoping that it would grow one day to mature into a fruit,’ he says.

This article represents part of a larger Background Briefing investigation. Listen to Hagar Cohen's full report on Sunday at 8.05 am or use the podcast links above after broadcast.

However, under law, Access Ministries are not allowed to attempt to convert children. The group’s CEO, Dawn Penney, says evangelism is not the point of the classes.

‘No, we do not proselytise; it is not something we promote,’ she says. ‘It is clearly in our training that it is not the way that we wish Access Ministries to be seen in the school.’

Earlier this year the group was embroiled in a scandal when one of their instructors handed out copies of a booklet called The Biblezine

It preached against safe sex and said homosexuality was a sin. The Victorian Department of Education investigated, and concluded that the incident was in breach of policy.

Penney, however, denies there’s a problem.

‘I don’t think [there is a backlash] at all,’ she says

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Transcript

Janet: Well, mostly about how God and Christ is going to come back alive and he's going to save us and stuff.

Hagar Cohen: There are 80,000 primary school children attending special religious instruction classes in Victoria. They're run by Access Ministries who use a system of codes and pictures to tell the children about Jesus and God.

Jordan: I saw my friend cracking a code and I said—and she'd already cracked it—and I was like, 'What does that one say?' and then she said, 'God can be your friend today.' Your friend today. And I said, 'Why? He's already dead.'

Hagar Cohen: That's Jordan, aged 8. Her older sister Janet, who's 11, is also familiar with the coding exercises. The father of these girls is part of the campaign against religious instruction in schools. You'll hear from him later. His daughter Janet told Background Briefing about her religious instruction classes.

Janet: Well, we did a lot of prayers on the ground and the teachers asked us to pray for what we were grateful for. We also did a lot of codes and most of the work you had to crack these codes and it had a message, and then when you've finished there's a whole sentence or a bunch of words.

Hagar Cohen: And what would those sentences or bunch of words be about?

Janet: Well, mostly about how God and Christ is going to come back alive and he's going to save us and stuff.

Hagar Cohen: Save you from what?

Janet: I'm not quite sure. I've been to church before and they just seemed very different; it's like, in the church it's not like 'You have to believe this', they just say it, and then in the CRE it's like, 'This is what happened and this is what you should believe.' I feel very, like, pressurised by doing it because it's like, forced, like they force you to believe this sort of stuff.

Hagar Cohen: The methods and message of Access Ministries teaching is causing a backlash in schools and from parents.

David Zyngier has been campaigning against Access Ministries.

David Zyngier: The fact is that these people, these institutions—and they are fundamentalist religious organisations that are not part of the mainstream of Australian religion—are coming into our schools and wanting to evangelise and proselytise our children while they are vulnerable and open to conversion to become disciples to their beliefs.

Hagar Cohen: Some of the parents' concerns started when their children came home with lollies that had been given to them by Access Ministries instructors. These lollies had special stories attached to them.

Saher: They say that a candy cane stands for a 'J' so you can remember Jesus.

Saher: Well, at Christmas mas you get candy canes, and at the end of the year you get a bag of lollies, and the people who don't do CRE, they don't, so they kind of feel a bit unfair.

Hagar Cohen: Children who didn't attend CRE—that's Christian religious education—missed out on the lollies. Here's Jordan:

Jordan: Well, maybe they're giving them food so then the other people that see that will think, 'Well, if I join then I'll get candy.'

Hagar Cohen: The philosophy behind linking Jesus with lollies was about winning over the children. That's according to a former Access Ministries teacher George Aslanis.

George Aslanis: Lollies was a great thing to refocus their attention on something. So I might turn a lolly into a J, turn it upside down, invert it, and say it's a J-stick, which is a Jesus stick. What can you tell me about this stick? They might just say it's red, it's white, it's got spirals, I might go, hey, that's really great, it is. You know, it's really tasty as well. Guess what? It's also J, what does J stand for? Jesus! Yeah, great!

Hagar Cohen: Special songs are also used to sell the Jesus and candy story.

Candy cane song: Can you see the J, it stands for Jesus ChristAnd the night that he was born, an IsraeliteOh Candy canes, Jesus reigns, do you know the KingThe red stands for the blood he shed, to wash away our sinHey Candy canes, Jesus reigns, do you know the King…

Hagar Cohen: When Jatender Middha's daughter came home with a story about a special Jesus lolly stick, he wasn't impressed.

Jatender Middha: One day she came back and she said, 'We've been given these candy canes, and J, it means Jesus.' That was like, ah…no way.

Hagar Cohen: The Hindu parent Jatender migrated to Australia from India three years ago with his wife and eight-year-old daughter Saher. Saher's new-found interest in Jesus alarmed him.

Jatender Middha: I think she was trying to relate almost everything with the God and that was sort of an eye-opener for all of us and that's when we thought no, this is not the way of teaching. We come from India, and if you go to India, 95% of schools there is absolutely no religion is taught in any of the schools, and it comes from the family, it doesn't come from the school. So if I have to give any religious education to my kids, I'll give that at home. I don't want anyone else to come and teach my kid what is a religion.

Hagar Cohen: Jatender and his wife linked up with a group of parents who had a website about religion classes that was started by Scott Hedges.

Scott Hedges: I began as a parent feeling like what was going on was wrong.

Hagar Cohen: Scott Hedges' two daughters were attending a Hawthorne East public school in Melbourne. He decided to investigate Access Ministries and the whole policy by the Victorian government about religious instruction in schools.

Scott Hedges: I ended up going to the library and reading a number of really interesting books and I learned the history of this whole policy. That I turned into a paper which later became the website, and I met other parents who were equally aggrieved. That became the campaign.

Hagar Cohen: The campaign is called Fairness in Religion in Schools, or FIRIS, and now, after four years of campaigning, the parent-led revolt is starting to bite.

Scott Hedges: Well, the numbers are plummeting. Parents are voting with their feet so the program is being terminated by virtue of the fact that simply parents aren't interested in this, they don't feel like they need it, nor do they want it.

Hagar Cohen: In February this year, a major controversy stalked Access Ministries. One of their religious instructors distributed a booklet called Biblezine. Its content preached against safe sex, and said homosexuality was a sin.

It prompted an investigation by the Victorian government. It found that Access Ministries' volunteers handed out 17 copies of the booklet to year 3 to 6 students at a public school. Some of these children's parents had previously asked that their children have nothing to do with the Access Ministries classes. The investigation about the Biblezines concluded that they were in breach of department of education policies that support sexual diversity in schools and same-sex employees.

In the last month, 50 schools have dropped religious instruction classes. Lara Wood had been monitoring these developments on behalf of the parents' campaign.

Lara Wood: What we found is that participation rates have declined very, very rapidly. At our last count 50 schools around Victoria have chosen to cease the program due to lack of interest. It's very significant. We feel that our campaign has been very successful. We feel that we are making history here.

Hagar Cohen: Access Ministries said the incident was a mistake. Their acting CEO is Dawn Penney.

Dawn Penney: It's more about human error; we're all humans, and it was just a lack of judgment in that case, in the sense of the Biblezine, and are we clear on that? We don't approve that material. End of story. That's it.

Hagar Cohen: But that wasn't end of story. The Education Minister in Victoria issued an edict with new rules about how schools explain to parents what goes on in the classes. It includes detail about the Access Ministries teaching material and about who the religious instructors are and what their church affiliation is. The schools from now on also have to make it clear to parents that the classes are religious instruction, as opposed to the study of religion.

Since this information was sent out to parents, hundreds have withdrawn their children from the classes. But Dawn Penney thinks the children will be back.

Dawn Penney: We did not have the opportunity to send out factual information explaining what we do as an organisation. So the only perception that parents have is what is in the media, and there's a lot of confusion. And it's always important to keep communicating with all our stakeholders in this because, again, it's actually being able to reach them with the information that they need to make that informed choice.

Hagar Cohen: But I suppose the ministerial directive requires of schools to provide parents more information about the curriculum, more information about the teacher. Is that not a positive…?

Hagar Cohen: So why would parents feel that they don't want to send their children in classes if they have more information about what it is that you do?

Dawn Penney: I think, again, how can I speculate on what parents think?

Hagar Cohen: Joe Kelly is the principal of Cranbourne South Primary School in Melbourne. He's got over 300 students in his school. One day, three years ago, he decided to sit in on one of the lessons run by Access Ministries.

Joe Kelly: I made a point of visiting classrooms and observing these sessions, quite a few of them. And I've got to say, what I saw distressed me.

Hagar Cohen: He came to the conclusion that special religious instruction, or SRI, had no place in his school.

Joe Kelly: The nature of SRI in its very self is disruptive, it's divisive, it's anti-educational. We should be calling it what it is; it's indoctrination. Children as young as five years of age are being sat down and told truth claims, and they're being told 'you have to believe this'. Why? Because you have to believe it. There's no opportunity to question, there's no invitation or encouragement to question any of these things. This is religious indoctrination. Let's call it what it is. And it's happening in our public schools.

Hagar Cohen: Joe Kelly followed his hunch about Access Ministries. He contacted a school curriculum expert for advice about the Access Ministries' teachings.

David Zyngier: It was purporting to be supporting the Victorian education curriculum and I found that in no way did it support the Victorian education curriculum. In fact, it was antithetical to the Victorian education curriculum.

Hagar Cohen: Dr David Zyngier from Monash University joined up with the campaign against Access Ministries after he analysed their religious instruction booklets.

David Zyngier: All the instructional material leads to only one answer; that Jesus is God, Jesus is there to save you, and if you don't believe in Jesus, then you are a bad person. And, of course, that can be very, very damaging for young children, especially when they go home and they ask their parents, 'Do you believe in Jesus? Do you go to church?' and if they say no and no, then they've been told by their religious instruction teacher that if you don't believe in Jesus and you don't go to church, then you are a bad person and you'll go to hell.

Hagar Cohen: When principal Joe Kelly got the advice, he had to weigh up whether government policy about religious instruction was in the students' best interests.

Joe Kelly: Well, it left me in a very difficult situation, but I had to just simply go back to the basic responsibility I have as a principal. And the very first item in my principal contract is to ensure the delivery of a comprehensive high-quality education program to all children. And I had concluded that the SRI activities in this school, and no doubt in every school, simply did not reach the standard of quality educational practice that my school requires. I advised the provider, which was Access Ministry, that they would not be required in my school from that moment on.

Hagar Cohen: Joe Kelly was one of the first principals to take this unprecedented step, but he wouldn't be the last.

Joe Kelly: I'm not the only one that's actually expelled SRI from their schools. Many, many more principals are now feeling very, very confident in doing just the same thing.

Hagar Cohen: At around the time as Joe Kelly stopped religious classes at his school, another scandal broke out. A recording of a controversial speech by former CEO of Access Ministries Evonne Paddison was discovered by the parents:

Evonne Paddison: Let me now say something about making disciples of our children and young people through ministry in schools, which is what I'm involved in. The first step in becoming a disciple is clearly believing, but so many of our young people have never heard the gospel. They will not hear it unless we go and tell and make disciples of them.

Hagar Cohen: She made it clear that their mission was to turn schoolchildren into disciples of Jesus.

Evonne Paddison: In Australia we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the gospel. Our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples. There are students who do not know that God exists, who have no idea of what Christianity is about.

I think of one child who was convinced God's name was Harold because he'd heard someone say 'our Father in heaven, Harold be your name'. Then another who thought Jesus was some kind of animal liberationist because he had cured 10 leopards. I believe that this is the greatest mission field we have in Australia: our children and our students. Our greatest field for disciple making.

What's your strategy? There is an enormous amount of Christian ministry going on in our schools, both at state level and at national level, both in government and non-government schools, but we must ask how much of that ministry is actually resulting in Christian conversion and discipleship growing and resulting in church growth? There are 3.5 million students in Australia: not a bad mission field, is it.

Hagar Cohen: That speech sparked a federal government investigation. That investigation cleared Access Ministries from any wrongdoing because Evonne Paddison said her speech was taken out of context.

Formerly with Access Ministries, George Aslanis decided to quit his role as a religious instructor when he stopped believing in their mission. George Aslanis left Access Ministries over a decade ago, but he was willing to speak to Background Briefing about their teaching philosophy. He says Evonne Paddison's lecture was entirely consistent with their purpose in schools.

George Aslanis: She's saying nothing different, there's no surprises. She's quoting Matthew, and the Christian church has followed that proclamation for 2,000 years, that's why it's such a strong religion.

Hagar Cohen: George Aslanis' journey to become a religious instructor began 20 years ago.

George Aslanis: I did become a born-again Christian when I was 18, and that was driven at the time with two years of soul searching about questions of life, questions about depression, exploring concepts of suffering, and the only thing that I could really do is understand that I'm a sinner and repent and give my heart and soul to Jesus, and accept him in my heart.

Hagar Cohen: He attended a Baptist Church in Bentleigh, Melbourne, where he was asked to volunteer with Access Ministries.

George Aslanis: I just saw it as a divine calling, and it's a question of what can I do to become more like my maker. So I just said yes and that was it.

Hagar Cohen: George was sent out to a workshop run by Access Ministries to prepare him for the role.

George Aslanis: I met a lot of people like myself—conservative evangelicals—and people who wanted to make a difference.

Hagar Cohen: What does it mean, 'conservative evangelical'?

George Aslanis: That means people who believe in the fundamentals of the faith, who may in some contexts be referred to as fundamentalists, who believe that the Bible is God's literal account, that we believe it is inherent, it is without error, and we believe very clearly there's a call to salvation, and call to proclamate that message to the world to win over all people to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hagar Cohen: He was confident about how to go about sharing his faith.

George Aslanis: So I didn't really see it any different to a Sunday School encounter, a similar sort of format; a bit of play, some songs, some fun activity, some drawing in, some Q&A back and forth, and ultimately wherever possible just putting a seed out there, in the hope that it would grow one day to mature into a fruit.

Hagar Cohen: So the purpose of you there was to bring those kids to Jesus?

George Aslanis: Yes, it is. Ultimately it is, ultimately that's what drives me as a Christian. When I wake up, it's my alpha and my omega, it's my beginning and my end. So it's a bit paradoxical when I hear people say 'what is the purpose', the purpose is clearly to inculcate Christian values and Christian beliefs, there's just no other purpose, and ultimately hopefully foster a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. So it was a wonderful opportunity to go out and fulfil the gospel of Matthew.

Hagar Cohen: How did you practically interpret the gospel of Matthew?

George Aslanis: I think there's only one interpretation you can take from that and that is that there's a clear proclamation there to share the good news. The Christian church has been doing that for over 2,000 years, been spreading Christianity throughout the world at every junction, so it's certainly not a religion that just maintains a status quo, it's a mover and a shaker. I've got 2,000 years of precedence behind me to continue that momentum, and at the end of the day there is a higher divine call that is sent out in Matthew. I mean, the term the proclamation to go out and share the good news as I have unto you is very clear to me, there's no lack of perspicuity, and all my brothers and sisters in the Lord believe the same as well, so there was no digression about what was needed to get done.

Hagar Cohen: George Aslanis says there's a reason why it's the fundamentalist Christians who mostly volunteer to teach religion to children, and not the progressive or liberal Christians.

George Aslanis: I don't see them out there preaching the gospel. I see them perhaps going to church here and there, having a bit of a wishy-washy get-together, perhaps they might get involved with some sort of social engagement like alleviating poverty from the Melbourne CBD. That's okay, that's good, that has its place, but that's very different…we want to make a spiritual difference. But the evangelical Protestants are concerned about the heart and guts of Christianity which is ultimately centred upon Christ. We must share the good news and win people over.

Hagar Cohen: Access Ministries started teaching religion in schools decades ago, and in the early days it was fairly uncontroversial. The Uniting Church was one of the 12 churches that formed Access Ministries. In the 1990s the spokeswoman for the Uniting Church in Victoria was Bronwyn Pike.

Bronwyn Pike: It was an ecumenical body and it was very well supported by mainstream denominations, of which the Uniting Church was one. So I had a very close relationship and a really high regard for the people who ran that organisation.

Hagar Cohen: But in the late '90s, Access Ministries went through some big changes. It was corporatised and fell into the hands of the evangelical members. Volunteers flooded in from the Pentecostal mega-churches. The Uniting Church was uneasy about the power shift.

Bronwyn Pike: During my time there, a number of other denominations sought to become involved in Christian education in schools and in fact in broader chaplaincy programs. And a lot of the Pentecostal religions and the more evangelical churches, the non-mainstream churches, were growing in number and influence and certainly resources, and they sought to have an opportunity. And I have to say that the mainstream churches were concerned about this. I think the mainstream churches were concerned that kids would be taught about, you know, that evil things were the work of the devil, and that Christianity was the only form of spiritual expression.

Hagar Cohen: Just from your experience with the Uniting Church, when you saw that move, what were the discussions behind closed doors within the Uniting Church? What were people saying?

Bronwyn Pike: I think there were serious conversations about whether the Uniting Church still wanted to provide funding for an organisation if it was to be fundamentally transformed with a theological base that wasn't consistent with the Uniting Church theological base.

Hagar Cohen: It took more than a decade for the Uniting Church to do something about their concerns. In 2011 they began an investigation into what Access Ministries was doing in schools. Last year, they released their report. It was highly critical.

Reading: The Access Ministries curriculum has a limited focus. There is little or no acknowledgement or exploration of other world views and world faiths. It does not reflect social and religious diversity, or address or recognise indigenous spirituality.

Hagar Cohen: The report found widespread dissatisfaction.

Reading: Not a week went by when there was not a complaint from members of one or more denominational partners who felt they were being offended, compromised or misrepresented by the content of the material.

Hagar Cohen: Next month the Victorian Synod of the Uniting Church will decide if it will withdraw support from Access Ministries.

Now looking back at the Uniting Church's involvement, Bronwyn Pike is wondering why the church didn't do something earlier. In 2007 she became Victorian Education Minister. Bronwyn Pike has told Background Briefing she was never comfortable with what Access Ministries were doing in schools. But for political reasons, she chose not to act.

Why didn't you do anything about those concerns when you were actually Education Minister?

Bronwyn Pike: I think that these are tough questions for politicians to be able to deal with because they potentially open up a broader debate about what is the value base of our society. And I think that whilst people strongly affirm multiculturalism, a pluralistic society, free expression in religion et cetera, there are also people within the community that somehow have a deep affection or connection to what they would say is the Christian basis of our society. So I think politicians are a bit gutless, you know, and…

Hagar Cohen: Are you saying that also about yourself?

Bronwyn Pike: Look, I think I could have been at the time a bit more critical, critical in my analysis. It wasn't my priority at the time. I think it hadn't reached a flashpoint at the time that I was Education Minister. Whilst I was completely opposed to exclusive right of Christians to be the only chaplains in schools and whilst I had concerns about Access Ministries from a broader ideological perspective, there wasn't a screaming roar, no one was coming after me with a baseball bat saying you've got to change this system.

Hagar Cohen: Bronwyn Pike has been following the news about Access Ministries, and she says she's distressed at what she's seeing.

Bronwyn Pike: I'm personally very concerned to the point that I don't believe that the current model of Christian education in schools is appropriate for our society at the point that we're at at the moment. I think that the exclusive access of one denomination and one religion is highly inappropriate in a pluralistic society.

Hagar Cohen: It wasn't only the Uniting Church who were getting concerned about Access Ministries. The vice chancellor of the University of Divinity in Melbourne is Professor Peter Sherlock. He took a motion to the Victorian Synod of the Anglican Church, which would have had the effect of removing Access Ministries from Victorian public schools. He proposed the Anglicans back general religious education, which means professionally run classes about all religions and taught from a critical perspective.

Peter Sherlock: Yes, that's correct. The Anglican Diocese of Melbourne met in synod and I sponsored a motion that didn't call on SRI to be shut down but simply said, could we encourage the government to take up this new option of general religious education? And the synod disagreed with me, in a somewhat controversial vote, but that's how it was.

Hagar Cohen: The Anglican Church were split over how to respond to Access Ministries, and remains so to this day. Professor Sherlock says because at its core religious instruction is about proselytising to children.

Peter Sherlock: Christians believe the whole world is a mission field. It's an unusual religion in that it has the aim of conversion and proselytising, not, at its best, for any evil intent or a desire to take over the world, but because we actually believe in the good news of Jesus Christ, that this amazing thing happened that is the answer to all of the world's problems and so we want to tell people about it. So that's the first broad point.

That is precisely why Christian religious education in schools is such a challenge, because undoubtedly every participant is going to be motivated at some level by that fundamental belief that it's a mission field. So to the listeners out there who suspect us all of being into being into proselytising, at one level we are.

Hagar Cohen: So as a Christian, as a religious person yourself, as a deeply spiritual person, why are you against SRI in public schools? I mean, don't you want to evangelise? I mean, isn't it part of your mission as well?

Peter Sherlock: I think fundamentally it's the wrong way to go about evangelisation because the premise on which SRI occurs is religious education. It's good for kids to know about a particular religion and to be exposed to some of its teachings, but the proselytisation or deliberately saying, 'I want to talk to you about God's love for you and help you to see that,' is a different issue that I don't think has a place in a school. It transgresses against what the parents might want, the child's own sense of choice and freedom, it's not the right place to do it. So I have come to the conclusion that I don't think SRI is a sustainable system and my real fear is that we'll lose not only SRI but religious education altogether and then I think our kids would be even worse off.

Hagar Cohen: Despite failing to convince his peers of the Anglican Church, Professor Sherlock still believes special religious instruction has no future in schools.

Peter Sherlock: I don't think Access' reputation in the public is going to enable it to continue to offer that program for very much longer. So my hunch is that SRI won't be here in five years' time. I think it'll be gone and I think it's because these rumblings have been persistent for a long period of time.

Hagar Cohen: Around the corner from Peter Sherlock's university office, Kew Primary School in Melbourne's east, recently dropped religious instruction. The disquiet there started when mother of three, Jacqui Tomlins, raised concerns.

Jacqui Tomlins: Well, I had many concerns. First up, I think one of the issues is my kids who don't do it aren't allowed under the regulations from DEET to actually participate in the curriculum. So really effectively the curriculum gets suspended for half an hour a week, so that some kids can do special religious instruction, and the other kids twiddle their thumbs.

Hagar Cohen: Jacqui campaigned to remove the classes.

Jacqui Tomlins: Well, I had a hunch that a lot of the people at my school, and generally, put their kids into SRI not really knowing what it was. They think it's a broad-based education that their kids are getting, or they think it's fairly innocuous, some moral tales, Good Samaritan, that sort of thing.

Hagar Cohen: So what did you do about it?

Jacqui Tomlins: So the first thing I did was to try to make parents a little bit more aware of what they were actually getting their kids into. And I thought that if they knew that, they would take their kids out. And pretty much that's what happened. So I wrote a blog. And what that did was to generate discussion. So for about a month…pick-up and drop-off, and sports meets and coffee mornings, there was a conversation going on about the place of religion in schools, specifically about the place of SRI in our school.

Hagar Cohen: Kew Primary is just one of the many schools who recently rejected religious instruction.

But the acting CEO of Access Ministries Dawn Penney, in her first media interview, told Background Briefing they are supported by the churches and the wider community. She says she doesn't think the problem is serious.

Do you feel that there's a backlash against Access Ministries in the community?

Dawn Penney: No, I don't think that at all, no.

Hagar Cohen: And yet so many schools this term have decided not to take on religion classes.

Dawn Penney: But as I said, I think that is down to the fact that there wasn't information clearly given. What I'm proposing is that we actually give informed information as to what we do, so that we lessen the confusion out there for parents.

Hagar Cohen: So from your perspective there's no merit to criticism of Access Ministries whatsoever?

Dawn Penney: Look, I don't think there was anything serious, you know, or specific, to be honest, when I think of that question.

Hagar Cohen: Dawn Penney denies Access Ministries' work in the past few years has been controversial.

The organisation…what you provide is described as 'controversial'.

Dawn Penney: Correct.

Hagar Cohen: How do you feel about that?

Dawn Penney: Disappointed, to be honest. That would be a fair…from my point of view, and it comes down to confusion, it comes down to the way that it has been portrayed in the media.

Hagar Cohen: She says Access Ministries is not trying to convert schoolchildren.

Dawn Penney: No, we do not proselytise, it is not something we promote. It is clearly in our training that it is not the way that we wish Access Ministries to be seen in the school.

Hagar Cohen: Access Ministries acting CEO, Dawn Penney.

Primary school girls Janet and Jordan have this year left religion classes. They found it confusing.

Janet: Everything in the book is codes, so if anyone opened it they wouldn't immediately see the message. So I feel like it's, like, part of that, that they don't want people to see what they're trying to teach. I don't know why because religion isn't a bad thing if all the religions are being taught, but if there's only one then they probably wouldn't want people to see it. So putting it in codes is a good way to hide it.

Jordan: I think the purpose of religion teaching is so they can make lots of people believe that God's real, but I don't know why they want to because if people are just forced to believe God's real, they're just going to think it's unreal, because they're just telling them what they should think is real and what they shouldn't, so how will they know, like, that is real? There's no proof, they're just saying it's real.

Hagar Cohen: Jordan and Janet's dad, Scott Hedges, says that after all is said and done, the Access Ministries' strategy is backfiring.

Scott Hedges: I think that the churches should admit that this program does them no favours, that by the time a child has spent six years watching untrained people hack the message of Jesus using cartoon books, that they have probably done more to advance the cause of atheism than anything Richard Dawkins dreams of.